FROM EIR DAILY ALERT

Messages to China-CELAC Forum: Belt and Road a Promising Future

Jan. 22, 2018 (EIRNS)—Messages to, and speeches at, the China-CELAC Forum (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States), held today in Santiago, Chile, make one fundamental point: Cooperation in the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative offers a very promising future for all participating nations. In a message of greeting to the one-day conference, which includes foreign ministers of 33 CELAC nations and China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his delegation, President Xi Jinping urged all the Latin American/Caribbean (LAC) nations to actively participate in the Belt and Road Initiative, and forge a "trans-Pacific path of cooperation" that more closely links China with the LAC region. Just as in the past, when the ancestors of the Chinese people and the Latin American people "overcame great difficulties in crossing vast oceans, and jointly created the Maritime Silk Road spanning the Pacific," Xi said, today the two sides can work together in the framework of the modern Belt and Road.

In referencing the Belt and Road in his opening speech to the conference this morning, Wang Yi pointed out that the

"dynamic demand for cooperation from Latin America and the Caribbean, is due to the fact that those nations aspire to fulfill the dream of vitality for their people,"

and proposed that the 33 CELAC nations establish a "maritime and territorial inter-connectivity, for greater prosperity and development" by means of innovation in transportation, infrastructure, and energy production, to build "bioceanic railroads and tunnels, maritime and air routes."

In her remarks to the conference’s opening session today, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet stated that

"the great step that China has taken with the Belt and Road Initiative is significant.... [T]he work that we are carrying out for Latin American integration—for example in terms of bioceanic corridors—can link directly to this New Silk Road.... These are initiatives destined to empower us as we seek a better future for our region."